I am a MA/MBA candidate at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School of Business. I focus on Russian politics, economics, and demography but also write more generally about Eastern Europe. Please note that all opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and that I do not speak in an official capacity for Lauder, Wharton, Forbes or any other organization.
I do my best to inject hard numbers (and flashy Excel charts) into conversations and debates that are too frequently driven by anecdotes. In addition to Forbes I've written for True/Slant, INOSMI, Salon, the National Interest, The Moscow Times, Russia Magazine, the Washington Post, and Quartz.
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'Dying' Russia's Birth Rate Is Now Higher Than The United States'

This was not the headline that the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics gave its recent release of provisional fertility data for 2012. However, if you compare the most recent CDC data with Rosstat data on Russian births you see that, for the first time in a very long time, in 2012 Russia’s birth rate actually exceeded that of the United States. This is, to put it mildly, a significant reversal from the not too distant past when the US had a birth rate that was as much as 75% higher than Russia’s. As you can see, the speed and scale of the convergence is impressive

Since 2008, the Russian birth rate has increased by about 10% while the United States has slumped by about 9%. At first glance this might sound surprising: didn’t Russia’s economy perform abysmally during the financial crisis? Isn’t their economy going straight towards a hard landing? But it’s really not much of a mystery when you really think about it: Russia, and particularly its labor market, rebounded from the financial crisis very quickly. The sorts of metrics which would be a reasonable guide to family formation and births, particularly the unemployment rate and the average real wage, are at historically good levels in Russia. Essentially, Russian wages have never been higher and unemployment has never been lower. Meanwhile, in the United States, wages are stagnant and unemployment is way above its long-term trend. This sort of economic malaise has had a predictably depressive effect on fertility.

What is not particularly relevant for the discussion are the personalities of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin: neither deserves much credit (or blame) for their respective country’s performance. Fertility is notoriously immune to state interventions, and while I’m sure someone will show up in the comments and say that Russia’s strong performance is solely due to the “maternal capital” program the reality is that most of the change is due to structural demographic and economic factors that are incredibly difficult to change. So Russia’s relatively good performance doesn’t automatically vindicate Putin and the US poor performance doesn’t “prove” that Obama is awful.

It’s also worth noting that Russia’s birth rate will, in the not too distant future, start to decrease as the tiny cohort born during the chaos of the 1990′s comes into prime childbearing years and replaces the relatively large cohort born during the 1980′s. It’s unlikely, then, that Russia’s birth rate is going to exceed that of the United States for very long: there is, at most, a 4-5 year window before structural factors take over and reduce Russia’s rate while bolstering that of the United States.

But I nonetheless want to highlight the enormous change in relative performance between Russia and the United States because 1) it’s something that’s not well recognized and 2) strongly suggests that Russia is not some bizarre and indecipherable ”dying nation” but is actually dealing with a number of demographic problems that every other advanced country is also dealing with. A lot of people pointed at Russia’s naturally shrinking population and basically said “what a wretched and awful place: they can’t even maintain their own numbers!” The fact that the white population is now naturally shrinking in the US should hopefully make people just a little less willing to stereotype the Russians and a little more willing to honestly discuss issues of demography by engaging with hard data.

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Automatically doesn’t but apologetically does? Anyway, what you are saying, dude, is essentially the same type of demagoguery as “I’m not a racist, but…”. You never forget to sat that you are not a Putinist, but then you repeatedly agitprop that Putinism has brought manna and quail for the Mafia State. If that isn’t apologism, I dunno wattafak is, dude.

Another huge problem with you propaganda is that you give unmerited benefit of the doubt to the Putinist statistics. We adults know that Russia is corrupt to the core. It would be reasonable to assume that corruption effects every aspect of life, data and numbers. Also you must be aware that in information-deprived environments, like in the Third Reich I mean Rome, opion polls, even elections (remember the 147%, dude?), have a close-to-zero validity.

Why is Russia a dying nation? It is not because of birth rate (which according to you has been constantly improving during Putin years, but which still is way below replacement level), it is because life expectancy has been falling since 60′s. In male life expectancy Russia ranks below Ukraine, Iraq, Botswana, Namibia, Cambodia and 143 (out of 193) other countries.

If Russia wants to stop dying it has to bring life expectancy at least to Eastern European levels.

you don’t understand how demography works. the birth rate (not average life expectancy) is what drives population growth or shrinkage. if low life expectancy made a country “dying” then Nigeria’s population would be collapsing instead of growing at one of the most rapid rates in the world

Yes, Russia is equipped now better to support younger population at the expense of dying out “pensioners”. Natural resources.. Their population still declining (and it would be better Mark if you provided comparison between births per woman graph), but less so and when the generation of 50-60 olds will die out they will have better statistics providing that Russian rulers will be still good Caesars.

Comical, and desperate. Life expectancy was the go-to coup-de-grace of Kimmie La Russophobe for a long time, but now, that’s all you’ve got left. Russia is dying, that’s all there is to it, and no discussion that suggests otherwise will be entertained.

Turn your face to the wall if you must, Harold, but the conclusion is inescapable – the reign of Vladimir Putin has been good for Russia. Keep on trying to make it all about corruption and homosexual rights if you want to, but research will disappoint you; most other countries have a much worse record in both categories than they would like to admit, but cannot point to a rising standard of living and a growing economy to offset them.

Russia is not a dying nation; it is thriving, and forging an alliance with the nation which will be the world’s largest economy in just a couple of years; as of now, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is the top bank in the world as rated by Bankers, while Bank of America slid two spaces to third. The UK’s profits from banking slipped 41% in the last year, and are now below the take for France.

Russia’s average life expectancy is 70 years at birth; 64 for men and 76 for women, according to the OECD. It needs to improve, and I am confident it will, but life expectancy in Russia has been improving pretty steadily since around 2000. It will bear watching, but is not an immediate concern like an unemployment rate of more than 7%, with the only optimism generated coming from people who have given up looking for work – which, as things are counted, makes the numbers look a bit less horrible.

Life expectancy in Russia has not been falling since the 60′s, you’re just parroting nonsense you heard at some Russophobic site or in the western newspapers, in which you are likely to find as much truth on the subject of Russia as you will find oranges in a teaspoon of sand. If you would look things up before putting your piehole in gear, you would save yourself a lot of embarrassment. Russian life expectancy at birth, for males, in years, increased from 58.5 in 2003 to 63 in 2010, according to the World Bank.

Ukraine’s life expectancy for men, which you trumpet enthusiastically, is actually 65 – a year more than Russia. Whoopty doo. Interestingly, Ukraine’s rate is just now getting back up to where it was in 1989, when it was 66. And that’s under the iron fist of “Russian stooge” Yanukovych – some of the lousiest life-expectancy ratings for Ukrainian men were during the “happy time” of the Orange Revolution, under western shill and economic wunderkind Viktor Yushchenko.